Industrialisation — a realist’s view

The Editor: It is very unfortunate that the media decided to categorise the people protesting the industrialisation of the Southwestern peninsula as “environmentalists,” calling their struggle and environmental protest. The reality is that most of the residents of Cedros opposed to the petro- chemical industrial mega complex at their doorsteps never even heard of the term environmentalist until the press started calling them environmental protesters and enviromentalists. The reality is that when somebody is concerned about being driven from their home and forcefully pushed into the murder a day environment of northern Trinidad, they are not exactly staging an environmental protest. The reality is that if a resident of Icacos who has a heart condition may not be able to get any medical help because there’s an ammonia leak at the “estate” that would not exactly be an environmental protest. There is only one road in and out of Cedros and the “estate” will be occupying most of it. Realistically, that is a very dangerous situation when your estate traps an entire population like rats in a cage.

The reality is that if somebody comes into your neighbourhood to build 12 mega industrial plants right on top of the aquifer where your drinking water is coming from, you start worrying about your water supply. That does not necessarily turn you into an environmentalist. Do you know of any developed nation where people have six water tanks in their backyard? Just being realistic here. The reality is that  if somebody worries about getting gas for their car in the future while the official policy seems to be to get rid of it and to burn it up as quickly as possible, that makes them a realist, not an environmentalist. We haven’t developed any alternative fuels for our cars yet, so how about saving some for later. When I worry about the future of my children, how would they live, where would they live, that does not make me an environmentalist, it makes me a realist.

What would Trinidad be without Pt Lisas? A realist’s answer, it would be like Barbados or the Cayman Islands. To make the giant leap and proclaim it would be like Haiti is downright silly. Let’s look at the other Caribbean islands, the one’s that are not that “fortunate” to sit on a giant fault line that spits out oil and gas. Is the poverty level higher in Barbados, the Caymans or the Bahamas? No, the opposite is true. Are the roads worse than ours? No they are not. Is there less economic opportunity in a tourist oriented country? Not at all. Our own Tourism Minister proudly proclaimed that tourism is already generating more income and more jobs than all industries combined. The Cayman Island dollar buys you more than one US dollar. How did we get into the position where our money is worth 15 US cents? If we are raising our standard of living it is in spite of Pt Lisas, not because of it.

A realistic look at this so called Vision 2020 is that our vision is quite contrary to what is happening in any developed nation. All, and I mean all developed nations are decreasing their level of heavy industry. Even China stopped building any more smelters. The US made it their policy a long time ago to export all their dirty industries to greedy third world nations where nobody gives a damn about the welfare of their citizens. But even the third world countries got smart eventually, take India for example. Bhopal was a wake up call for India and now they are a power house in software and information technology. Now that is Vision 2020. A realistic vision. What do we have to conclude from the fact that all of the developed nations are getting rid of their heavy industries? (The US hasn’t built an oil refinery in many decades). The Trinidad view seems to be that the whole world is wrong, we are the only ones that have it right. Not a very realistic view now, is it?

A realist would wonder why the entire Cedros Peninsula Industrial park business is shrouded in secrecy. Do you know what is in that Memorandum of Understanding that the Government and Alcoa signed? Do you know what industries exactly are coming to these new “unspecified” industrial estates? Do you know how many of these industries are actually outlawed in the developed world? Any nuclear weapons facilities? Chemical warfare? Do you know? How much does all of this cost us, the tax payers? Let’s be realistic, the Government is spending our money, not theirs. Are we paying subsidies to foreign companies? Why?

Alcoa is telling is that we have outdated information yet they have not provided one single bit of information on how their so-called new technology will be safer. The fact is that with 30 or so pages full of information on Alcoa and Smelters, not one single line of information published on the  www.nosmeltertnt.com website has ever been questioned or disproven by Alcoa. We have heard concerns that this country is slowly turning into a US colony since our land seems to be being sold to the foreign companies bit by bit. A realist would conclude, if we were a US colony, at least there would be laws against building this deadly chemical cocktail at our doorsteps. Just like the term environmentalist just doesn’t fit the the Cedros people, US colony makes a point but it doesn’t fit. Slave State would probably be a better term...just being realistic here.

Valerie Rogers
Port-of-Spain